"Another call from Jae Moon," Hogan said.
"Ignore again," I repeated.
"Sue Zay, he might have information about your current predicament. Maybe there are more drones coming to replace the ones Emma just destroyed," Hogan said.
"Or maybe he's just calling to be a fucking grandmother like someone else I know?"
Xiu Mei skidded into view, and I fired up Funakoshi to follow her. She took me wide, up a parallel street before she crossed over eastward. There was a narrow alleyway adjacent to the building, and I was able to park my bike behind a beat-up green dumpster there.
"So how we gonna do this, Ninja Master?" Kate Tee asked.
"I'll ride with Xiu Mei, and the three of us will park next to the building." I jumped on the back of the Chinese girl's black and blue bike and wrapped my arms around her lithe waist. She hit the motor, and the electric engine spun the wheels to shoot us forward towards the building. Stacey Jones and Kate Tee fell in line behind us, and we threaded in through the open gates like a needle.
"This is all kinds of fucking stupid," Stacey Jones said.
"You just said you wanted to fucking do this!" Kate Tee hissed.
"Fuck yeah. It's still all kinds of fucking stupid." The redhead laughed.
"Ninja-style, Bosozoko Bitches." I reminded them, and they both stopped talking.
The ride across the empty parking lot felt like a funeral parade, and even though we didn't see anyone through the windows of the nearing building, I couldn't shake the feeling that four hundred pairs of eyes and just as many assault rifles were pointing at us. I half expected gunshots to ring out across the deserted lot any second.
Then we were at the corner of the building. I saw the overhang that Kate Tee spoke of, and I motioned with my hand for Xiu Mei to park the motorcycle with the front facing the exit of the lot in case we needed to leave in a hurry. Stacey Jones and Kate Tee parked in the same manner, and the four of us dismounted.
"This looks easy enough," I whispered as I looked at the overhang. It covered a walkway by the door. The door looked like it was made of steel and rusted into one piece. The overhang didn't appear like it was in much better condition, but two steel support beams seemed to be in good repair. I wrapped my gloved hands around the far side of one of them and then put the bottoms of my boots against the cylinder. In a few quick moments, I'd walked my way up the pole like a coconut farmer would scale a tree.
The roof of the overhang was rickety, but it held my weight easy enough, and I guessed it would maybe hold one more person safely. I motioned down for only one of my friends to join me, but Kate Tee was already pulling herself up onto the ledge. I helped her stand and then motioned for Stacey Jones and Xiu Mei to wait below for us.
Kate Tee pointed, and I followed her finger to the busted-open window. We would have to climb onto three massive air-treatment units that jutted out of the building like red warts, but it didn't look like there would be any sort of crazy acrobatics involved. They almost formed a stair pattern, perfect for the ninja-fucking-badass-super-secret-spying that I had in mind.
I moved to the first air unit and set my hands on top. Each one was a little over eight feet tall, and I had to stand on the tippy toes of my riding boots, latch my gloved fingers on the rusted metal, and then pull myself up slowly so that the whole thing didn't rip out of the wall. When I wasn't riding, or doing schoolwork, or fixing Funakoshi, or programming Hogan, I was lifting weights and exercising at Kate Tee's house. Pull ups were an important movement that she never let us skip, so I was thankful that I was easily able to get on top of the air blower.
The second one was in really bad shape, and I felt the massive metal box creak and sway under my weight. It definitely wouldn't carry both of us at once, so I motioned for Kate Tee to hold her position until I made it up to the third unit. Fortunately, the last one below our destination window was in good repair, and I stood on it without hearing any creaking. I looked down at Stacey Jones and Xiu Mei and saw both of the girls nervously pacing by the motorcycles. Then I reached my hand down and helped Kate Tee ascend the final air-treatment unit.
Then we poked our helmeted heads through the broken window.
The lighting inside was surprisingly good. There were new-looking lamps hanging from the ceiling, and the floor of the place was polished almost to a mirror shine. It actually reminded me somewhat of Jae's carefully maintained garage. Then I noticed that there was a kind of metal catwalk on multiple levels around the perimeter of the building. The metal looked rusted and in ill-repair, but I quickly realized that the damage was mostly on the far side of the warehouse. The walkway under me looked safe enough to stand on. I also saw the cream-colored executive pod parked in the middle of the polished floor.
Then I saw the desks.
There were three of them, piled high with computer tech, dozens of TV screens, and stuff that looked suspiciously like the kind of shit you would use to make bombs. The news was playing on most of the TV screens, and I wasn't surprised to see all of them turned to the bomb coverage.
In the center of the mess of desks, a man paced back and forth. He was tall, probably six and a half feet, with a short but full beard. The man seemed to be on the phone since he was looking at the screen on his watch. I reached under the glove on the back of my left hand to augment the audio sensors on my helmet.
"I don't know what the fuck happened. They were working just fine, and then they both went down. Didn't you say that you had this shit covered?" The man paused, and I kept pushing the volume up on my helmet, but I still couldn't hear what the dickhead on the phone said to the lean motherfucker.
"Hey, Robby," the man pacing by the computers called out across the warehouse. I turned my attention to the direction he spoke in and saw two smaller tables eighty feet away. On one table sat a stack of black assault-looking weapons, on the other table was a card game. The three goons I recognized from breakfast were sitting around the cards, and one looked over at the shouting man.
"Wah?" I didn't recognize the accent, but it definitely wasn't Californian.
"You sure you weren't fucking followed? We just lost two drones."
"Naw. We weren't fuccckan follllowed. We didn't eann stop the pod 'til the train stayshan," the big goon motherfucker shouted in accented English and then turned his attention to the card game.
"Hogan, are you recording this?" I dared to whisper to the Australian-themed AI unit. I didn't have an easy watch command to turn on the visual recording function for my helmet, and I didn't want to look away for half a minute while I fiddled with my skin controls. Hogan's image glowed green, and I guessed that he had either just turned it on or that he already had it working when I first pushed my helmeted face into the window.
"He said he wasn't followed. Could have been a random corporations' defense drones." Tall fucker shrugged his shoulders. "No, no. There's been nothing going on here. I'm just waiting for you to tell me when to hack Cordia." I turned to look at Kate Tee, and she gave me a wide-eyed expression. Cordia was the name of the corporation that ran the high-speed rail network throughout all of San Francisco and the surrounding counties. It practically formed the arteries of Northern California and helped tens of millions of people move through the valley every day. Did this guys want to destroy Silicon Valley's other public transportation also?
"Why do you want me to wait?" The tall man sighed with obvious disappointment. "Yeah, it is right here on my computer. I can just hit a button and it will execute." He gestured at his center table, but I couldn't really see exactly where he pointed.
"Okay. Couple of hours. Got it. I'm going to send the guys out for some food then. I'm fucking hungry." There was a pause, and the tall, bearded man shook his head.
"No. No. No. I need to feed my genius. Robby said no one followed him. You gave me these guys and told me they weren't fuck-ups. Are they good, or do you think someone followed them?" He paused for a few seconds. "Yeah. That is what I thought. So here's the deal: They go get me food
, and then, when you figure you want to do this thing I spent the last six months planning for you, wire the money to my account and give me a call. Get it?" He paused again and then nodded.
"Good. Hey Robby!" the tall man shouted again. "Your boss wants you to go get me lunch."
"Got it." The three men stood up and reached for their dangerous-looking assault weapons.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." The bearded man took out his ear piece and set it on the table. "You don't all need to leave. Do you meatheads fucking hold hands when you go to the bathroom? For the love of Joseph Smith." the goons turned to look at each other. The one that Tall Fuck was calling Robby shrugged his shoulders and walked to the car alone.
"Waayoo want?" the muscular man asked. Damn, what was that accent? It could have been Gutter English from a dozen different countries.
"I don't care. Here." The tall man threw a bundled-up wad of cash that the goon caught without much of a thought. "Just get a bunch of stuff for the four of us; we might be here all fucking day. McTacoKingJr is fine, whatever is the quickest."
"Goo it," the goon said and then stepped into the car. I was starting to think the accent was Gutter English from the UK area. The roller door rose, and I looked at Kate Tee. She read my mind and ducked out of the window to warn our two friends to move the bikes further away from the corner where they were parked. There was a chance that Robby wouldn't notice them on his way out, but our suits and steeds were painted very loudly. He would definitely see us on the way back unless they pushed the motorcycles further against the rear side of the building.
The door finished its ascent, and the pod backed out of the warehouse. I could see it do a turnaround in the abandoned parking lot and drive towards the gate exit. Then the door started to roll back down, and the tall bearded man sat in front of his computer screens.
I felt a light tap on my shoulder and Kate Tee gave me a thumb up to indicate that Stacey Jones and Xiu Mei had moved the bikes and escaped detection. I nodded in return and then focused my attention on the tall fucker behind the computers. He didn't look like the crazy kind of fucker who would kill hundreds of people. The man had comfortable-looking khaki pants, a buttoned-down, blue-striped shirt, and, when he put his feet up on the table, I could see that he wore rugged cowboy boots. He also didn't seem nervous or twitchy. His body language signalled impatient, but calm. Maybe this wasn't the guy responsible for the bombing? Maybe when he had spoken about Cordia on his phone it wasn't as dastardly as I had assumed.
"Ha!" The bearded man leaned his head back and let out a triumphant shout after about five minutes had passed. "Look at all these dumb fuckers." He pointed at the TVs and their endless stream of news coverage about the bombing tragedy. Then the tall man glanced around and yelled over at the goons. "Hey, you guys should be watching the screens. We've done some good fucking work today."
"Nawwww, we just wannna play cards, Bouss," one of goons said. They weren't even looking at the tall man.
"You guys are so fucking boring, but, alas, your company is the price that must be paid."
"Waayyya meeen, Bouss?" I realized that Robby was probably the leader because his accent was the least thick.
"I'm already bored, so I'm not going to fucking dumb it down for you. Ugh." He stretched in his chair and fixed his attention on the news feeds.
I felt Kate Tee tug on my arm, and I looked at my friend. It was hard to see through the glass on our helmets, but I could make out enough of her expression to understand that she wanted to get the fuck out of here.
"I'm going to go take a giant shit. Don't fucking touch my computer. Understand?" The tall, bearded man stood from his chair with long stretch.
"Goot it, Bouss," one of the goons said without looking up from his cards.
"Can you fuckers just pretend that you're doing your job for a few minutes? Like maybe look around the building? Do a fucking patrol? Maybe touch your guns so that I think they didn't just send me a bunch of jack-offs? We just bombed the fuck out of San Bruno, and you guys are sitting around fingering each other's assholes like it is Pioneer Day."
"Goot it, Bouss," the goon repeated. He still didn't look up from his cards, and the tall asshole shook his head and muttered to himself while he walked to the far end of the warehouse. There were a series of doors there, and he opened one of them before he stepped into what I guessed was the bathroom.
Kate Tee pulled lightly on my arm, and I looked at her. The pretty blonde girl gestured down away from us towards the motorcycles and raised her eyebrows. I shook my head, made a typing motion with my fingers, and pointed inside the window. My friend's eyes got super ginormous, and she shook her head violently. I shook my head in return and pointed at the computer desk aggressively. We needed to get that computer. If that asshole really did have another terrorist attack up his sleeve, then I might be able to stop it if I got the hardware. Even if the computer didn't hold the answer to what was going on, I was sure that Jae and Caleb could hack into it and either figure out who these people were or at least get enough evidence to keep me safe if the police ever pinned me at the train station.
Kate Tee pointed back inside and then made her arms look like a rifle, complete with a bucking motion when it fired. Then she smacked me on the arm and raised her shoulders as if to say I was a complete idiot.
I was probably a complete fucking idiot, but I didn't think there would be another opportunity to snatch the computer. Tall Fucker wasn't at his table, one goon wasn't around, and the other two were busy playing cards across the room and weren't paying attention. It had to be now or they could trigger whatever terrorist strike that had planned. Then countless more people would die.
Kate Tee grabbed my arm, and I could feel her hands gain some sort of crazy momma bear strength. She shook her head again and pointed down at the motorcycles. I shook my head, gave her the stink eye, and pointed back at the bikes while I rolled my finger. She leaned her head back in despair and then shook her helmeted head in defeat. I pulled my arm out of her grip and crawled in through the broken window.
As soon as my gloved hands and leather padded knees touched the metal catwalk, I felt my adrenaline surge to a strangely euphoric state. Then I almost immediately felt the terror seize my stomach, and I found myself trembling. What the fuck was I doing? These assholes were made of solid muscle and had fucking military-looking rifles. As soon as they saw me, they would shoot me full of holes. All they had to do was turn their heads slightly and they would notice me crawling on the metal above them.
I started crawling. Oh fuck me.
These boots weren't made for walking, or crawling, or doing anything else outside of hanging on motorcycle pegs and protecting me in a crash, but I somehow managed to slither to the end of the catwalk and descend half way down the stairs without the muscleheads noticing me from across the massive warehouse. My hands touched the smooth, polished concrete of the floor, and I let out a long sigh of half relief and terror.
My face was sweating inside my helmet, and the rest of my body was burning up in the enclosed leather riding suit. It felt like I was sitting in a jacuzzi, or that I had my own little private sauna hell enclosed around me. I could hear my heart beating a frantic gallop, and I took one last measured breath before I began my slow journey across the polished floor towards the three tables.
I crawled out in the open now. All the giant goons had to do was turn their heads over to me and I'd be seen, without question. I wore a fucking black set of riding leather with bright pink trim, and the floor was stark white. I stuck out like an oil slick on hospital tile.
I was half way there and one of the muscled, scary dickbags coughed loudly into his hand. I froze my crawl and risked a glance over to them while my heart and lungs screamed with terror. Oh fucking Nephi-Jesus-Gabriel-Satan-Lucifer-Spaghetti Monster, this was the end. The goon cleared his throat and then nodded his head back to his cards. I felt my heart slow its rocket-ship trajectory, and I resumed my crawling. The tables seemed to be a thousand yards away
, but suddenly I was sliding under one of them.
I came up to a crouch as quietly as I could and froze when my leather suit made a rubbing creak. It sounded way too fucking loud in my audio-enhanced helmet feed, but I didn't see the goons glance over toward me. Even if they had, I was partially hidden behind the stacks of monitors and rolls of power cables. It wouldn't be good enough to conceal me if they actually focused on the tables, but if they took a quick glance, they might mistake my black leather for part of the screens.
The table top was a mess of TV and computer-screen power cables. It looked like the tables had been hastily set up and the tall, bearded fuck hadn't cared to organize anything. I found the computer off to one side. It was one of the traveling pocket models, about the size of a stack of note cards. It was black with a single power cord entering it. All the other peripherals must have connected to it wirelessly. I saw that it plugged into a long extension cord emerging from the wall by the entrance to the bathrooms. I ducked down under the table, located the computer's plug, and pulled it from the female part. Then I stood half way so that my suit wouldn't fucking squeak again, and I grabbed the small computer. It was easy enough to wrap the cord around it half a dozen times, and the unit slid into the front pocket of my suit with only a tiny whisper of noise.
Okay. The hard part was over.
I crouched again and resumed my return crawl across the glass-like floors. I could see Kate Tee's helmet peering at me from the distant window, and I started to believe that I was going to get out of here with turning into a dead kitty cat.
Then the toilet flushed.
My heart was already going stupid fast with a dizzying mixture of terror and adrenaline, but it suddenly kicked on the super afterburners, and I felt my vision swim. Fucking move bitch, fucking move bitch, fucking move Sue Zay! I started chanting to myself, and I tried to increase my pace of crawl while fighting my urge to be silent. I could almost feel the waves of terror coming from Kate Tee's helmet, and I wondered if she was sweating as much as I was.
Concrete Chaos Page 11
